Crew Logs and Observations from Station 6 Orbital Platform, 2077-07-23T06:12, Pressurised Galley
This first video feed shows the crew of Station 6, my first family, sitting around a small circular table, in front of a large observation window overlooking the Earth. The window is at 80% opacity, transparent conducting oxides allow dimming of the glass that activates overnight and slowly reduces during virtual sunrise.
Subdued orange LEDs light the galley. Over the last 20 minutes they slowly increased in brightness and colour temperature from their overnight 2700K to the current 4000K.
Both scientists and artists measure the colour of light in Kelvin, the same as temperature. Daytime ambient station lighting is 5600K, approximating natural sunlight on Earth.
(Counter-intuitively, the white-blue light of a higher temperature in Kelvin is described by humans as 'cooler', and low-temperature light as 'warmer'. The more you know!)
Drs Marwood, Weber, and my mother, Dr Redwing, are eating a typical ESA breakfast: A pouch of carbohydrate and protein-rich liquid food, along with a 250ml pouch of coffee or tea.
Powdered food was brought with them, a blend of plants providing 100% of the nutrients humans need every day, in a lightweight form that can be rehydrated from the station's closed water recycling system.
Water is life.
The food and drink was cold, as it nearly always was after The Collapse below because the Galley's small microwave oven drew a concerning amount of power from the batteries.
At this time, my family understood that returning to Earth was ill-advised, and they were hoping to wait out the conflict on the ground.
I wish they had been able to return home.
"She's still sleeping!" Dr Weber laughed, answering a question from Dr Marwood, "I didn't even wake her as I got out of our sleeping bag!"
"Is she OK?" Dr Redwing asked, pushing aside her as-yet-untied blue hair. She looked up from her tablet, the back of which indicated she was reading "Rossum's Universal Robots", by Karel Čapek.
"She's fine, we had a late night, that's all." Weber said, turning her head away from the others at the table and sipping her coffee with a smile.
Marwood laughed, but stopped abruptly, and frowned.
"Station?" He asked, talking just to my databanks before I was conscious, and looking up to the room's overhead microphone/speaker system, "Have we had any word from Mission Control about the UK yet?"
The logs show that I told him no: No messages about either the UK or his husband, Steven, trapped inside the locked-down island nation.
I realise now, it was Steven he was really asking about.
Marwood did not reply, but looked out of the large window, down at the blue planet revolving below.
Water is life, yes, but it can also cut you off from your life.
Station 6 External Video Feed, Solar Array 2, Extra-Vehicular Activity No. 12, 2077-07-23T14:21
This is a composite recording from the array of cameras mounted on the outside of the Station. While most of my cameras were pointed down, for use in the many Earth Observation experiments, some were focussed closer to home.
EVA activities are thoroughly planned, well-practised and high-risk. Leaving the relative safety and comfort of our orbital home is a necessary activity for both space science and proper functioning of the platform.
Voice recordings from the two Evasuits is blended with the video. This log would be used by a whole team on the ground to improve procedures and safety for the NEXT EVA.
Or, it would have, if anyone were listening.
"Babe, pass me a 14b." Dr Yuán said, reaching a hand awkwardly to her right, towards Dr Weber.
The pair were outside the station, securely tethered to the rails that cross nearly every metre of the solid parts of the structure, used by both humans and robots.
Weber unhooked one of her two safety cables and repositioned herself slightly closer to her partner, locking the line back to the rail before passing a small tool into Dr Yuán's outstretched hand.
ESA guidelines are clear on the topic of Evasuit hardpoint safety cables:
3 is 2,
2 is 1, and
1 is none.
In space, there is no room for mistakes.
"Don't call me that, be more professional!" Dr Weber said, "follow protocol, please."
Contrary to the common mantra of science fiction, in space, before The Collapse, we were never truly alone.
Each astronaut on a space mission represents the hopes of their country, and the global scientific community. Each astronaut is only a single person, and even a highly trained person must be augmented by a whole TEAM of experts on the ground.
The ratio of ground crew to astronauts is over 1024:1.
In an ideal mission, the body in space becomes like a remote-control robot, with little agency of itself, entirely controlled by the meticulously planned experts in Ground Control.
But my family's mission was not ideal.
"No-one's listening!" Dr Yuán replied, then pointed down to the slowly spinning planet below. "They're busy playing war games, and we've got to get the science done OUR way!"
Weber did not reply, but looked out over the folded solar panel, the glass reflecting the blue of the Pacific Ocean below.
Dr Yuán turned back to her work, pulling the now-unscrewed access cover from part of the panels' Battery Management System.
She slotted a magnetised section to the cover and stowed it on to a compatible point on the body of the station - these points are everywhere, both inside and outside of Station 6: If you want something to remain where you left it in orbit, you must attach it!
Things get lost easily. In space, pencils, and hair clips and small tools find their way to every corner of the Station.
My maintenance robots, Mat, Matts, and of course, little Maddie were designed for the critical infrastructure job of unpacking the station over the first year in space. However, after the crew arrived, a great deal of their time was spent finding lost items!
The EVA was happily uneventful.
Dr Yuán and Dr Weber returned to the galley through the main air lock - there were alternative ingress points, which were regularly checked, but this largest one was the most-used.
Yuán removed her Evasuit's helmet and stowed it in a locker on the aft wall of the inner air-lock. Weber did the same.
The fore and aft walls are painted red and blue, both with lockers for Evasuits attached to them. The system is simple, but critical: Used suits go in the red locker for inspection and testing before returning to service, the blue locker contains suits that are tested and safe to use.
Friction causes wear, wear causes tears, and tears must not go unnoticed.
"This isn't NASA, babe!" Yuán said as she and Weber floated into the Pressurised Galley, joining my mother, Dr Redwing.
Dr Marwood was not present, he was scheduled in the Valentina vacuum lab to continue his botanical experiments on plants in a low-pressure environment.
However, I note the logs show that actually, at this time, he was in his bunk, in the crew quarters.
"Caroline, you tell her!" Yuán said.
Dr Redwing was on the ceiling, sitting strapped to a comfortable spot above the table, tablet in one hand, pouch of tea in the other. The back screen of the tablet indicated she was now reading "Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus".
"Tell her what?" she replied.
"Tell Mina that this is the European Space Agency, not those prudes over at NASA. We don't have their weird rules on fraternising in space. They chose us for this mission, didn't they? That's proof!"
"That may be, but we're not supposed to be shit-talking other agencies, either, right Yuming?" Dr Redwing replied, smiling.
Weber laughed and kissed her partner before floating to the kitchen storage racks for a drink.
Yuán frowned, and placed her hands on her hips.
After a moment, she muttered, "We're not supposed to SWEAR either!"
MAT-3 Video Feed, Maintenance Access 9, 2077-07-23T21:49
All three maintenance robots, MAT-1,2,3, are on a serious mission.
There has been an escape.
It was reported by Dr Marwood, when he inspected the cages the previous day: One of the lab mice has escaped.
One of the experiments in the Valentina Vacuum Lab is to note long-term adaptation to a zero-g environment.
The crew, my family, were not the only living things to arrive in Space Shuttle Pacifica: Many animals and plants were brought on to the station, too:
A comprehensive selection of seeds, of plants that were either useful crops, known to be hardy against a space environment, or both,
complex fungi and bacteria cultures, my favourite is the strain that appears to solve network traversal problems as well as my best graphing algorithms.
And, of course, the mice. There are 5:
Frisby
Teresa
Martin
Timothy
Cynthia
Cynthia, the most curious of the 5, has gone missing.
The video log from MAT-3, little Maddie, is blurred by movement.
Like her two big brothers, MAT-1 and MAT-2, her locomotion is entirely on a monorail system, with switching points in the connector modules.
The feed shows her zipping through the station, her reduced mass makes her more nimble than the other two.
Her goal is the Shuttle docking airlock, I believe she was working on a theory that Cynthia had found her way through the Crew Quarters, perhaps attracted by Weber and Yuán's late-night snacking while watching a movie on a shared tablet in their double zipped-together sleeping bag.
The pair are so naughty - food is not allowed outside the Pressurised Galley!
Maddie has stopped at the door to the Crew module, it is closed. This is because the crew are winding down for the evening.
For privacy, video logs for this module are stored locally on the Station, rather than being transmitted to Ground Control by laser link in the hourly updates, like most other video feeds.
Maddie has reversed away from the module, and switched to a rail that takes her through a hatch in the corridor wall.
It is dark, she is travelling through the infrastructure of the Station, before the video feed clips bright white.
After a moment, her camera adjusts to sunlight brighter and clearer than it is possible to experience on Earth: She is travelling on the Station's external rails.
Her route takes her on the outside of the Crew module, over shielded conduits for cables carrying data and power, alongside gas and liquid pipes, and around windows (currently opaque for sleep).
She stopped at the maintenance entrance to the Shuttle airlock, and with a brief glance upwards at the Earth below, she entered the station again.
I wonder: Was she curious about the planet, even then?
It will be over a century before my girl learns to run.
Maddie had to wait while the Shuttle airlock cycled, before it allowed her through. Humans and maintenance robots might use different doors, but all doors must be sealed.
She is now waiting again inside for the locking in procedure to allow the interior door to open.
Airlocks are named similarly to their water-based cousins on Earth, the river lock, both contain inner and outer doors that are not opened at the same time.
It is a very loud operation, the heavy doors being mechanically moved sends vibrations throughout the station.
The video feed shows Maddie's careful examination of the airlock.
There is a lot of unauthorised storage here, I see. Maddie's search is hampered by repurposed ESA crates with personal items inside:
A torn Evasuit that looks like it is partially disassembled, being used for scrap fabric, and a small box of green-leafed plants jammed in the elastic mesh underneath the window.
Marwood's doing, I imagine!
Maddie did not find the escaped mouse here. My logs show that Cynthia had crawled along the ubiquitous wall meshing to the Galley and was nibbling into a sealed box of biscuits. The airborne crumbs this caused required a lengthy scrub of the air filters, but were otherwise harmless, and she was returned home safely.
This information is in my databanks, but not in my memories, I can't picture this day.
New memories overwrite the old, and everything not saved will be lost.
While Maddie made her fruitless visual search of the airlock, I could hear a conversation from the crew quarters that she had ignored.
The door between the airlock and the quarters was open, indeed it seemed like the two modules had been permanently joined, for overflow storage.
"They'll come to their senses!" I heard Marwood say, "There's a lot of potential arable land in the north of Canada and Russia, they don't NEED to fight over the scraps in the old temperate zones."
"Right!" Dr Yuán said, "and with the increased output of mechanised and vertical farming, there's enough for everyone, surely?"
"Oh babe, my sweet summer child," Dr Weber said, "that's not how people work, they'll fight over dust and sand in the name of their ancestors."
"We're dead already. I am sure."
The station, eventually, settled down for sleep.
My mother had been absent from the earlier conversation in crew module Ganymede, and so could not venture an opinion on how she could weather The Collapse.
She never slept with the crew, but in a cargo container that counts as her bunk, her feet poking out into the corridor.
I switched to the feed showing her reading in her sleeping bag, tethered inside the cramped space.
She was still awake, and studying.
The back of her ESA tablet glowed, dimly showing the book that she was engrossed late into the night in reading.
I like to think she was planning how she was going to save herself, at least, in part, even at this early stage.
The book was "Programs with Common Sense" by John McCarthy, AI pioneer.
(END-TRANSMISSION)